Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members. Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.

Filmforum pays tribute to the late great George Kuchar with an evening of his video work. While his decades of films are most often screened, George played and made remarkable works on video for many years, most notably his Weather Diary series, but also much more.This program was curated by Abina Manning of Video Data Bank, who distributes videos by the Kuchar videos. Quite a few are probably Los Angeles premieres!

We're delighted to partner with the Free Form Film Festival this weekend, and are really honored to have Mike Kuchar in person for both evenings as well. We also have, from VDB, Tom Colley, who has been overseeing the preservation work on the videos. We'll be screening new works by Mike Kuchar on Sunday night.

Screening:All title descriptions written by George Kuchar. Total running time 76 minutes. All from video, 4:3.

Point 'n Shoot (1989, 5:08)A lavish home is visited, shutters click, bottoms are exposed, water splashes and a welcome wetness stains an area unquenched for so long. A jacuzzi bubbles to life in a bedroom community that floats to sleep on aqua-filled rubber.

Route 666 (1994, 7:51)The strings of fate manipulate the living and the dead against a landscape of water vapor and watercolors which make more palatable the unacceptable and the undigestable.

Season of Sorrow (1996, 12:23)Ice falls from the sky as tears plip-plop onto wall-to-wall carpeting. No degree of renovation can enliven the dead that we mourn in our hearts as the storm of the centuries assails our heads with memories of the passing parade that got rained on. A weather diary of May-time misery.

Uncle Evil (1996, 7:02)The young and the innocent at the mercy of a palpable presence oozing menace and scarlet-stained goodness as a strawberry sundae melts under the glare of future hell-firestorms in search of kindling.

Honey Bunnies On Ice (2001, 7:00)A winter chill sets in making the furry residents of various dwelling places a center of affection and reflection Only the lure of mammalian fur promises a few precious moments of centigrade comfort in this zone of zero zoology.

Burnout (2003, 19:47)A metropolis awash in electrical overdrive crashes in the heat of summer and sends a Bronxite into the clutches of a waterworld further north. It is there that we witness the cooling fogs and diving mammals of maritime yore and sail free in winds of a nautical nature.

HotSpell (2011, 25:55)George's final video. Los Angeles premiere.A weather diary that travels through some rough inner and outer domains. Social interactions blend more smoothly than the clash of air masses which threaten to clobber a prairie town in a vortex of violence. Flashbacks and flashpoints flare-up along with thunderheads that loom and boom with vibrations of doom, their every move charted with vivid vibrancy on videographic maps which detail developing devastation. Desire and death are in the air along with some aromatic wisps of ethnic edibles, so be sure to sniff it all.

George Kuchar (1942-2011) ranks as one of the most exciting and prolific American independent film- and videomakers. With his homemade Super 8 and 16mm potboilers and melodramas of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, he became legendary as a distinctive and outrageous underground filmmaker whose work influenced many other artists including Andy Warhol, John Waters and David Lynch. After his 1980s transition to the video medium, he remained a master of genre manipulation and subversion, creating hundreds of brilliantly edited, hilarious, observant, often diaristic videos with an 8mm camcorder, dime-store props, not-so-special effects, and using friends as actors and the "pageant that is life" as his studio.

In 1984 Kuchar received the Los Angeles Film Critics Award in the Experimental/Independent category. In 1992, he received the prestigious Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video Artists from the American Film Institute. In 1996 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for forty years, where he made many videos in collaboration with his students.

"...The best for last, though: the filmmaker George Kuchar... When the day arrives--and it will--to appoint an official United States cultural ambassador to Outer Space, Mr. Kuchar is the obvious choice. I will say no more. See his films. He is beyond enigmatic. He is 'it.' I salute him."--Holland Cotter, Review of "Good Morning Midnight" exhibition at Casey Kaplan Gallery, The New York Times, July 27, 2007

George Kuchar: An Interview: http://www.vdb.org/titles/george-kuchar-interview

Mike Kuchar, cinematographer, painter and writer and brother of George Kuchar, was born in New York City. He began making 8mm movies in the 1950's, switching over to 16mm film production in 1960, and continues now, producing short motion pictures in the video and digital formats. Mike and George Kuchar were the co-recipients of the "Vanguard Director Award" at the 11th CineVegas Film Festival, 2009, and the 2009 "Frameline Award" at the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. http://www.vdb.org/artists/mike-kuchar

Ryan Wylie has crafted documentaries about reproductive healthcare in the Peruvian Andes, the death penalty, the Sanctuary movement, Amazonian spiritual herbalism, indigenous land entitlement in Mexico, and many other topics of social importance.His efforts as a filmmaker/activist have led to the reversal of two Missouri Supreme Court precedents and the release of an innocent man from death row. His works have been screened for diverse audiences, from the UN Human Rights Council to the Montreal Ethnographic Film Festival.In addition to his work as a maker and teacher, Wylie is also co-founder/curator of the Free Form Film Festival, where he has traveled as a curator and video performer, organizing over 120 public art events since 2003.

The Free Form Film Festival has curated/organized over 120 public art events, bringing experimental media, documentary, and mixed media performances to small and large communities alike. In addition to a screening/lecture/performance series in Salt Lake City and Denver, FFFF has peppered the SF bay area with independent experimental presentations since our festival premiere in 2003. Most recently, FFFF guest curated for the LIMITED ACCESS IV festival in Tehran and the annual event, Night Light, at SomArts Cultural Center in San Francisco.

Tom Colley, Collection Manager, Video Data BankTom manages technical services at the Video Data Bank, and is responsible for everything archival in nature. His main activities involve preserving and digitizing the collection. In addition, Tom collaborates in running the ButcherShop, an artist run studio space. He received a Bachelor's degree in Art and Anthropology from Oberlin College, and a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois. He is also an active member of AMIA, the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

Video Data BankFounded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement, the Video Data Bank (VDB) is a leading resource in the United States for video by and about contemporary artists. The VDB Collection includes the work of more than 550 artists and 5,500 video art titles, 2,500+ in active distribution.

The VDB makes its Collection available to museums, galleries, educational institutions, libraries, cultural institutions and exhibitors through a national and international distribution service, and works to foster a deeper understanding of video art, and to broaden access and exposure to media art histories through its programs and activities. These include preservation of historically important works of video art, the perpetuation of analog and digital archives, publishing of curated programs and artists' monographs, the commissioning of essays and texts that contextualize artists' work, and an extensive range of public programs. www.vdb.org---------------This program is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Additional support generously provided by American Cinematheque. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.

Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation. 2013 is our 38th yearMemberships available, $70 single, $105 dual, or $50 single studentContact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com. www.lafilmforum.orgBecome a fan on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter!